The Laughing Man

"Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf" the former a travelling mountebank, the latter his faithful companion. Gwynplaine was abducted as an infant, and cruelly mutilated so that his face shows the permanent smile of a clown. Abandoned by his abductors some years later, Gwynplaine rescues a blind baby girl from the frozen corpse of her mother at the foot of a gibbet. Time passes, and the young girl - christened Dea - comes to love Gwynplaine. Being blind, she is unaware of his disfigurement, but fro...